Manufacturing: Bills of Materials, Kits, Batches and Work Centres

Overview

Catalog → Manufacturing is for products you make yourself: a bakery's loaves, a candle maker's candles, a print shop's packs, a workshop's furniture, a factory's line. It covers:

• Bills of materials: what one batch of a product is made of, with versions.
• Kits: one product sold as a set of other products. Its parts come out of stock when it sells.
• Manufacturing orders: making a batch. The parts are held, then used up; the finished goods go into stock with their own lot and best-before, and you see what the batch cost.
• Work centres and operations: where each step is done, how long it takes, and timers your staff start with their time-clock PIN.
• What to make: today's list from open orders, pre-orders and reorder points, with the parts you need to buy beside it.
• Schedule: work orders placed on each work centre by its hours and how many jobs it runs at once, with clashes flagged.
• Lot trace: from an ingredient's lot to every lot made from it and every customer who received one.

Manufacturing is part of the Growth plan and above. Anyone who can see products can read it. Running orders (planning, confirming, producing, scrapping, timing work, saving the schedule) needs the owner, admin, manager or staff role. Setting up bills of materials, kits and work centres needs the owner, admin or manager role, because it changes what every sale takes from stock.

Bills of materials

Open Catalog → Manufacturing → Bills of materials and click New bill of materials.

1. Choose the Kind: Made here (manufacturing orders turn the parts into this product) or Kit (see below).
2. Choose the Product. A product with options (sizes, colours) needs its option: each option has its own bill of materials.
3. For a product made here, enter what One batch makes, for example 24 loaves or 5 kg of granola, and how many days it Keeps for (this sets the best-before on each lot made; leave it empty to use the product's own shelf life).
4. Add each part and how much one batch uses. A part sold by weight or measure can be entered in any unit of the same kind: flour kept by the kilogram can be entered as 250 g, wax kept by the gram as 1.2 kg, oil kept by the litre as 300 ml, ribbon kept by the metre as 40 cm. A part counted in units takes a whole number.
5. Add any by-products (soap trimmings, offcuts you sell) with the share of cost they carry; they go into stock as the batch is made.
6. Add the operations: each step's name, its work centre, minutes a batch and setup minutes, and instructions for the person doing it.
7. Click Save draft, check it, then Activate.

A product has one active version at a time. To change an active one, click New version: it copies it as a draft (version 2, 3 and so on), you edit the copy, and activating it archives the one before. Orders already planned keep the parts they were planned with.

Raw materials you never sell online are ordinary products: keep them as drafts so they never show on your store, and turn on Sell by weight or measure for anything counted in grams, millilitres or metres, so their stock is kept in that unit.

Refused, with the reason on screen: a product made of itself (also through another product's bill of materials), a gift card, a Network Search item, and serial-numbered products (manufacturing orders record lots, not serial numbers).

What a batch costs

Each bill of materials shows what one batch costs: the parts at their cost (the Cost on each product or option), plus each operation's minutes at the work centre's running and labour cost per hour, less the by-products' share. Use as the product's cost writes the cost of one unit onto the product. When a part has no cost the figure would be too low, so it is shown with a warning and is not used.

Kits

A kit is one product (a gift box, a sampler pack, a bundle with its own page and price) made of other products. Choose Kit as the kind, add the parts for one kit, save and Activate.

• What you can sell is worked out from the parts: the fewest kits the parts can make. A gift box of 2 candles and 1 soap, with 9 candles and 3 soaps in stock, shows 3. It updates whenever a part's stock changes, however it changed.
• Every sale takes the parts: online checkout, the till, layaway, draft orders and quotes turned into orders, invoices on terms, marketplace orders, subscriptions, auctions and exchanges. Online and at the till a kit whose part has run out cannot be sold, and the message names the part.
• Cancels, refunds and returns put the parts back, to the location each came from, for the kits that came back.
• A kit holds no stock of its own, always tracks stock and never sells on backorder; changing its stock by hand has no effect. Archiving the kit's bill of materials sets its stock to 0.
• A kit cannot contain another kit, and its parts cannot track lots or serial numbers yet (make that product with a manufacturing order instead, which records lots).

Bundles under Catalog → Bundles are different: they discount products the shopper adds separately.

Manufacturing orders

Open Catalog → Manufacturing → Orders and click New order (or Plan from What to make). Choose the product and the quantity, in its own unit.

1. Confirm and hold parts. The parts the batch needs come out of the stock you can sell now and are held on the order, from the order's location first. A lot-tracked part uses the lots that expire first (or the oldest when none expires). If there is not enough, what there is is held and Hold parts takes the rest later.
2. Start the work orders (see below), if you time the steps.
3. Produce. Enter how many were made, and any made but scrapped. The parts those units take are used up: held parts first, then more from stock if needed (refused, naming the part, when there is not enough). If a part was used differently from the recipe, enter what was actually used. The finished units go into stock, with a lot and best-before when the product tracks lots (the order's lot code, or the order number; a second production adds -2). By-products go into stock too. You can produce part of an order now and the rest later.
4. Scrap a part that was wasted along the way: it is used up and its cost stays on the order.
5. The order is Done when everything planned has been made or scrapped, or when you click Mark done. Anything still held goes back to stock.

Cancel order is possible until something has been made: every held part goes back.

Lots, best-before and recalls

When the finished product tracks lots, each production makes a lot with the date it was made and its best-before, and records which lots of each part went into it. A recall of an ingredient's lot under Catalog → Recalls then includes every lot made from it, at any depth (flour into dough into loaves), and finds every customer who received them. Lot trace shows the same chain for any lot code. A product that does not track lots cannot be traced batch by batch: turn lot tracking on for products you may need to recall.

Cost and margin

An order's cost is the parts at the cost they had when they were taken, plus labour and running cost from its work orders (the time recorded, or the planned minutes when nobody timed the step). Each production carries the cost incurred since the last one, by-products take their share, and the product's cost becomes the average of what was on hand and what was just made, worked out the way a purchase order's delivery is; each change is listed in the cost history under Inventory → Movement history. Your margin report then shows a real margin for products you make. When a part used has no cost, the product's cost is not changed and the order says so.

Work centres and operations

Under Catalog → Manufacturing → Work centres add each place work is done: an oven, a bench, a sewing machine, a team. Set how many jobs it runs at once, its running cost per hour, a labour cost per hour (used when a person's own hourly rate is unknown), and its working hours (in your store's time zone unless you give it one). A work centre that steps use is switched off rather than deleted.

Each operation of the bill of materials becomes a work order on the manufacturing order, with its planned minutes for that quantity. On the order, Start opens a timer for a person: choose the staff member and they enter their time-clock PIN (the same PIN as HR → Time clock; wrong PINs lock the same way), or leave it to time yourself. Several people can work one step. Pause stops a person's timer; Finish stops everyone's and readies the next step. Labour is each person's minutes at their hourly rate from their staff record (or the work centre's labour rate); the running cost is for the time anyone was on it.

What to make

Catalog → Manufacturing opens on What to make. For each product with an active bill of materials it shows:

• Open orders: units on open orders that took no stock when sold, such as made-to-order and pre-order items sold on backorder. Orders that took stock are already out of On hand, so they are not counted twice.
• For parts: what the suggestions need of products you make yourself (dough for loaves).
• In progress: open manufacturing orders, less what they have made.
• Reorder at and Make: the shortfall, plus a top-up when what you will have is at or below the product's reorder point, by the same rule Purchasing uses (the reorder quantity, or twice the reorder point less what you will have).

Plan opens a manufacturing order for the suggestion. Products made here (and kits) are left out of Purchasing's restock suggestions, so they are not bought by mistake. Below it, Buy lists the parts you do not make that the suggestions need and stock does not cover, to order under Purchase orders.

Schedule

Catalog → Manufacturing → Schedule places every open work order on its work centre: only inside the centre's working hours, never more at once than its capacity, each order's steps in sequence, and the soonest due first. A step longer than the rest of the day carries on at the next opening. Each work order shows its planned start and end, and its clashes:

• Ends after it is due
• Over capacity at that time (a start you pinned that the centre cannot take)
• Work centre has no hours
• Does not fit in the next 60 days

Pin the start fixes a step at a time you choose; Unpin lets the schedule place it again. Save plan writes the planned times onto the work orders, where the order page shows them.

Good to know

• Every stock movement a manufacturing order or a kit makes is in the stock history, naming the order.
• Parts held by an order are out of the stock you can sell, online and at the till, until they are used or given back.